The Love of the Other
by megawords19
Summary: pre-Twilight. How does a vampire from the 1640s fall in love with a woman from the 1920’s with a scarred past? This story is my attempt to explain the love/pain and different events that bond Esme and Carlisle together. Rated PG 13 for the mention of s
1. Chapter 1

Disclaimer: the characters and Twilight Universe belong to Stephanie Meyer. No copyright infringement is intended.

Important author's note: I will try not to have any major book or movie spoilers in this story but some of the vampire characteristics do need to be revealed and explained. Some later character's names will be used in passing but they will not detract from reading the books.

Chapter 1

The Impulsive Decision

Carlisle's POV

The Hospital was quiet, because the morgue was the place where the dead rested and where I paced back and forth on my hours off. One of the irritatingly observant but kind hearted nurses figured out that I had worked a full 24 hours straight and she had practically ordered me to go home and rest. Little did she, or anyone at Ohio Presbyterian, know that my very nature prohibited me from following her orders. By my count, it had been close to 281 years since I slept in a bed. I have been denied that pleasure ever since I became a vampire in 1640 and I worked at Ohio Presbyterian in the year of 1921. My lack of weariness was not the only factor keeping me from going home. As it so often seemed to happen, when my adopted son Edward was away hunting I focused solely on my patients and had lost track of the time. When the nurses forced me from the operating room, the sun. sat high in the sky. Its rays imprisoning me much better than any prison bars could have done. If the good people around me saw my skin glitter in that sunlight, then my otherness would have been revealed and the exposure of my kind's secret would have meant my death. So, like so many times before, I visited with the corpses. Their lifeless bodies shared my lack of a heartbeat and in my idle mind; they also seemed to share my loneliness.

In my morose mood, my quick hearing still picked up the distant sound of the coroners carrying a fresh body down to my refuge. I had plenty of time to spring into the shadows before the two heavyset men would lumber into the room. My hesitance came from a sound so faint that even I was not sure if my ears were playing tricks on me. Either way, I would have to wait until the men were gone before investigating. I hid securely in the shadows cast by the empty vaults on the right hand of the room reserved for the dead. Moments later, as I had predicted, the men carried a bloody bundle between them, the body barely concealed by a hospital sheet.

"I tell you, Buddy, suicides are the worst. And from what I can tell, she was a pretty cute doll, too."

The other man shook his head sadly in silence. And they both exited the room, wrinkling their noses at the smell of death. That smell did not bother me, nor did the blood excite any of the madness that my kind is so well known for. Out of necessity for my profession, I had denied myself the satiation of human blood for so long that it carried little appeal. At any rate, the bloody sheet did not impede me from my private investigation of the sound that I had heard moments before.

The heart beat was even fainter than earlier, and I could not blame the men for assuming her completely expired when they brought her to the morgue. When the faint sound filled my straining vampire ears, an achy loneliness washed over the rest of me. Like the split second decision I made to bring over Edward, I let my impulses guide my actions. As I gazed briefly at her smashed face, I noted that her matted caramel hair was the only indication that she was a beauty. And then, after collecting all of my self control from my core, I bit down on the soft, peachy skin of her neck. The transformation was by no means easy for me to complete, but it was less maddening than Edward's had been.

At the time of his transformation, it was true Edward was sick with the Spanish influenza, but a fever does not deplete a human of blood, so there was more temptation in his veins than in the body of the woman on the metal slab before me. Her head wound had nearly deprived her of all her blood, so taking the little required for the transformation was made that much more possible. When her body began to writhe in the inevitable agony caused by my venom, I knew I had been successful.

Quickly before her inevitable screams of pain could excite the curiosity of the hospital staff, I picked up her limp form and gently placed her in one of the vaults and shut it. The metal box was thick enough so that it blocked any sound inside it from being heard by a human ear. But my enhanced hearing forced me to endure the torture of listening to those pitiful limbs writhe in that unquenchable hell-fire that vampires are forced to endure as the price for immortality.

Esme's POV

God's judgment was quick. Within what seemed like seconds after jumping off that sandy cliff, I felt hell's fire consuming my being. Like anyone, I do not as a rule welcome excruciating pain, but I do welcome the ability to feel. For months the sickness that had taken my darling boy had also deprived me of any feeling. The weeping had not come. I had sat by his coffin surrounded by flowers in the church, not shedding a single tear. While I, the horrible mother, sat on that platform with the body of my precious babe, the reverend had assured the black-clothed mourners that Peter Platt, the only being I had ever loved, was sure to be embraced by God in heaven. Flowers and the tears of strangers had covered the lid of that horrid wooden box as they lowered my heart into that earthy resting place. Yet the tears of his mother would not fall. I was too numb, too appalled by my own failing to do anything but stare and pray to wake up.

Weeks passed and I could tell that this nightmare would not end. It was God's punishment for my momentary thoughtlessness. I had only had him home for a week before a storm had raged around our house and I forgot to shut his bedroom window. Within hours, he had a chest cold. And within days, a deathly fever had erupted on his innocent and perfect brow. This punishment was not going to be ended by my insufferably pitying neighbors or my husband's quiet engulfing sadness. So I took matters into my own hands, and I jumped off one of the cliffs that surrounded the beach where my husband had proposed to me just three years before. And my reward was this fire.

Carlisle's POV

I waited until the main night shift of the nurses was about to begin before I lifted the twitching, screaming woman into my arms. Using one of the hospital sheets that lay around the morgue, I quickly fashioned a gag for her mouth. In normal circumstances when I had to resort to restraints, I at the very least gave my patients and apologetic look and an explanation. But I knew she would not understand me through her pain so I did not bother. Fortunately, I had enough prestige in the hospital that no one questioned my actions. As long as I moved quickly and determinedly with my writhing bundle, no hospital staff would be impertinent enough to hinder me.

My son, on the other hand, knew me better and when I approached the two-story Victorian house that we shared, he met me on the steps. His butterscotch colored eyes glared at me, expressing the much deserved rebuke I had earned by condemning another to our lifestyle.

"Carlisle, what were you thinking? We do not have the strength between us to restrain and teach a newborn."

Like me, Edward knew that newborn vampires had uncontrolled strength and tempers. If they were not restrained, their need for human blood would drive them to commit massacres of enormous proportions in order to satiate their thirst.

"I took care of you, didn't I?" I managed, defensively.

"Only with the help of Sepharina, who you dragged from the Amazon… We couldn't possibly ask her to leave her sisters again on such short notice."

"We can handle it," I said, my optimism sounding forced even to my own ears. "Please, Edward, you need a mother and it was too great a chance to pass up. She was so close to death, I had to make a split second decision. There's no going back now."

Edward could not argue with the truth of the last part of my speech. So with a resigned sigh he opened the door while I walked in and placed the still-thrashing woman on the living room couch. Taking inspiration from the nurse who had rebuked me earlier that day, I sent a message to the hospital saying that I would need an extended vacation to recover from my reckless over exertion. I spent the remaining two days of the transformation holding the woman's hand, trying to explain and beg forgiveness for the rash decision I made that would forever determine the rest of her existence. The time passed. The warmth in her hand began to change more to the temperature of my own and Edward and I watched warily as a goddess gingerly rose from the white plush couch. Her blood red eyes expressed confusion, thirst, and a painful tidal wave of sorrow.

_Please review if you have the time. I really want to know what people think and whether I should go on. Constructive criticism is welcome as long as you explain yourself._

Disclaimer: the characters and Twilight Universe belong to Stephanie Meyer. No copyright infringement is intended.


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: the characters and Twilight Universe belong to Stephanie Meyer. No copyright infringement is intended.

A/N

THANKS SO SO MUCH to annoyed by you ,AriannaTwilight, and Suny B fro their AMAZING reviews!!! I'm glad that you like the alternating perspectives and tone. I'm glad posting this quickly will make you happy. Unfortunately, this chapter is all in Esme's pov. But the next one will alternate povs again. I will be traveling this week but I hope to post within the next two weeks. PLEASE keep the reviews coming they tell me what to do more of, plus, they make me SO happy. Happy New Year!!!!

Chapter 2

The Wrath of a Goddess

Esme's POV

I never thought I would be thinking in hell, but nevertheless my first conscious thought after the pain was that cotton tastes funny. Once my brain registered that and that the fire was gone, my mind started working overtime. If the fire was gone, did that mean I was not in hell? If I was not in hell, where was I? As soon as I decided to sit up from lying on something soft, I felt the room begin to spin. Two arms came into my view and steadied me. Judging by the man's face, which was quickly lowered to my level, I surmised that by some miraculous mistake I had been taken from hell to heaven. His angel face was impossibly pale. His eyes were a dark rich gold, they complimented his almost white blond hair nicely. Then a burning in my throat made me rethink whether I was in hell or not. The hell-fire was back consuming my mouth with a raw burning thirst. I raised my right hand to touch my throat. Before my fingers could touch that part of my body, they came in contact with one end of my cotton gag which stayed limply in my still open mouth. I snatched the thing from its inconvenient resting place and closed my mouth with a snap.

The spinning had stopped so I let my bewildered eyes scan the room around me. The room was plain in its appearance. There was a large radio on the opposite wall from me. The radio was like those I had seen in the newspaper advertisements. Its many dials were glossy black and the radio's mahogany casement was just as polished. On the whole, this marvel of new technology seemed very new and expensive. Seeing such a new invention with my own eyes was such an unexpected treat that I momentarily forgot my thirst and the room's other occupants.

I should say that that was until the blond angel covered his pursed lips with a fist and cleared his own throat. From the way that quiet sound hung in the tense silence of the room, you might have expected a lion to have roared. At any rate, startled from my reverie over the radio, my eyes first wandered up and met the cautious gaze of a young man who stood defensively in a semi-crouch just a few yards from where I still lay. He was also incredibly pale. His eyes were lighter gold than the older angel's, and he had dark messy brown hair. The recollection of the blonde's eyes prompted me to look down at the still figure beside me. One of his hands still closed on my upper left arm in support. When he saw my gaze on him, he dropped the other from his mouth. He parted his full lips for me in a small smile that revealed some of his sharp white teeth.

"I am Carlyle, and this is my son Edward." He gestured vaguely in the direction of the crouched man, but never once moved his eyes from mine.

Forgetting that it was probably a good idea to be polite around angels, I burst out my two most urgent questions in one breath. "Do you have little Peter? Is my baby happy in heaven?"

Saying this without the pretence of my own introduction, I closed my burning mouth while I waited for ether of them to answer. At first their only responses were expressions of blank confusion. Then the brown-haired one named Edward fixed an intense gaze on me as if he was trying to read my mind. Then faint comprehension and dread registered on his face. He traded looks back and forth with Carlyle, they seemed to hold a silent conference over my head. When I saw that Edward was not going to answer me, I looked down at Carlyle. His face was contorted in a mixture of compassion and guilt. I knew I was not going to like his answer.

"We are not angels. We are vampires. Do you remember any of what I told you while you were turning?"

After he uttered this grave question, I remembered this strange tale I had heard in the fire. At the time I just thought it was a hallucination brought on by the pain. But apparently not. With horror I started to remember the story of the legendary monsters that yearned for blood. But the ones that the voice, Carlyle, had mentioned were not so bad. They refrained from killing humans and only drank the blood of animals, "vegetarians" in his terms. The idea of killing did not bother me as much as it would have if I were not being slowly driven mad by my burning need. The part of the story that horrified me to my very core was the notion that I was immortal, unable to ever be with the dead either in heaven or in hell. A few weeks without my lovely boy had driven me to suicide. And this vampire, this fiend I had just thought an angel, told me that I was parted from my Peter forever.

I leapt up from the couch, my eyes blazing. My hunting instincts took over and I launched myself at Carlyle's neck, instinctually trying to find the place where his jugular vein once throbbed. Before I could take one step, Edward tackled me from behind, vainly trying to pin my claw-like hands behind my back. My newborn strength surged in my body and I broke his hold effortlessly. But Carlyle was too fast for me. He fled the room and, just as I was about to turn my anger on Edward, Carlyle distracted me with a plain white cup. The scent was something my body craved and could not deny. I angrily abandoned my attack and, instead, flew to Carlyle's side, snatching the cup of blood he offered me in one smooth movement. While I gulped greedily, the fire began to ebb and Edward took advantage of the moment to begin speaking rapidly.

"Yes, you are immortal." Edward seemed to answer my thoughts. "But do you think a life of killing will ever bring you closer to your boy? I do not know if we vampires have souls, but doing right never seems to be wrong. As you see, my father and I do not have the strength to restrain you."

Carlyle joined in, "Even though I understand your revulsion to what we are, I ask -- in the hope that one day you might be rejoined with your son in whatever end waits for us good vampires -- that you fight your impulses, that you instead let us teach you, and that you do good ."

My angry fire abruptly died. Instead, the old numb emptiness seemed to saturate my entire being. I fell back on the couch, my body wracked by tearless sobs. The sounds made Carlyle's face twist in guilty sympathy. But both Edward and Carlyle seemed greatly alarmed when the sobs turned to hapless, mad laughter. When I looked down at my big right toe, I saw that the coroners had apparently left a tag on me, denoting my supposed cause of death. I shook the scrap of paper from my now marble-like foot. I brandished the word scrawled on it in Carlyle's face. My eyes held a mad glint and my body still convulsed with the hopeless laughter.

"Out of all the people you could have made immortal, you picked one of the only people on this planet who just wanted to die. Or can you not read?" I said cynically, ignoring his tortured expression. "It says, 'SUICIDE'!" I screamed the word like an accusation. I spent the rest of that first night of my new life convulsing intermittently between my dry sobs and mad laughter, deaf to Carlyle's pleas for forgiveness and Edward's assurances that things would be all right. I was lost to everything but my own dispair.

_Please review if you have the time. I really want to know what people think and whether I should go on. Constructive criticism is welcome as long as you explain yourself._


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